


but the gnawing at my heart he does not hear

by anbethmarie



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: But all's well that ends well, F/M, and is jealous, and is majorly bitter, gilbert is awakened to the possibility that there may be something between anne and cole, lots of embarrassment, the dearth of shirbert scenes in ep 4 was scandalous so i decided to fix it, while anne sees gil with winifred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-16 23:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21044633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anbethmarie/pseuds/anbethmarie
Summary: Gilbert gets to see Anne in a grown-up woman's outfit and Anne gets to see Gilbert in a shirt which shows just how much he's grown.And these are the consequences.





	1. be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen I know Anne didn't actually carry a parasol! I think she only had a purse? but let's just go with it okay? :D

She was walking on quickly, carrying herself with some rigidity due to the bothersome constriction of the corset, but also with a kind of dart-like poise which caused more than one head to turn after her – an action which Anne took to signify that something must be not quite right with either her (or rather, Aunt Jo’s) dress or the elaborate structure that was, for the moment, her hair. Well, at the moment she really couldn’t care less.

She was walking on quickly because she had already taken longer than she’d planned, the afternoon was well advanced on its course towards evening, and she still needed to change back into her normal schoolgirl self and also to tell Cole and Aunt Jo all about her wonderful discovery before running off to make it in time for the train ride back home.

She was walking on quickly through the crowded main street of Charlottetown, keeping her head down for fear of attracting the notice of some stray acquaintance and thus fanning Marilla’s righteous anger into a pitch of white heat from which it would take months to come down.

She was walking on quickly, and thus when her parasol (a ridiculous little thing really, but oh so sophisticated-looking!) got caught in one of the number of large string bags carried by a bustling housewife proceeding up the opposite side of the pavement and subsequently fell to the pavement with a dull thud, it was a moment before she realised what happened and turned round to retrieve it.

By that time, however—

‘Excuse me, M’am? Er— Miss? You’ve dropped your—‘

By that time, someone was already holding it out to her, gazing at her with eyes which were very familiar, very bewildered, and staring her up and down in a disconcertingly direct way.

***

‘_Anne_?’

He was feeling quite unreal. It surely must be a dream, or else sleep deprivation acting on his brain and making him see things.

Or rather, people.

Or rather, one person, Anne Shirley to be exact; at least, the apparition had Anne’s eyes and mouth and nose and freckles. The hair, tumbling from under a small green hat in masses of coppery curls, was Anne’s beyond a doubt. There was no other hair this colour in the world, Gilbert was sure of _that_.

The details, then, were all Anne’s. It was the overall appearance that wasn’t.

For the person whom he confronted at that moment was a grown-up woman, tall and upright and striking.

And extremely beautiful, too.

He was, in fact, becoming fast aware of the fact that people – men – were glancing over their shoulders at her, with looks on their faces which caused a pang of anger to go right through him and resulted in his saying with an expression which was little better than a scowl,

‘What on earth are you doing? Where’s Cole? Why—why are you dressed – _like this_?’

Anne’s face, so disturbingly unfamiliar-looking in its setting of stray curly strands, went first very white, and then very red.

***

Impulsively, she caught at Gilbert’s hand, the one in which he was still clutching her – _Aunt Jo’s_ – parasol, and pulled him to the side of the pavement and out of the tramping passers-by.

‘I’ll explain everything later,’ she said somewhat breathlessly, giving him a pleading look. ‘For now, just please go along with it. As for Cole, I’m just this moment headed to Aunt Jo’s house.’

She was feeling like an unutterable fool.

Altogether, Anne rather wished she had never had the mad idea of dressing up in a grown-up’s clothes, for while Gilbert’s voice when he spoke had been angry the look in his eyes was, for some reason, making her giddy, and causing a sensation of tingling warmth to spread all through her body.

‘But _why_ isn’t he with you?’ he demanded again, making Anne want to scream with temper. ‘Surely you—‘

‘Ahem.’

Anne fairly jumped up, letting go of Gilbert’s hand, which she only now noticed she was still holding, and looked past his shoulder to where a girl was standing with a wide smile painted on her pretty, bland face.

Gilbert looked that way too, and his eyebrows contracted in bewilderment, as though he had forgotten where and in whose company he was.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Gilbert?’ the girl asked in affectedly mincing tones, still smiling widely.

‘I’m Anne,’ Anne said before Gilbert could speak, smiling back at the other girl and extending her hand towards her.

The girl’s eyebrows shot up, and she glanced at Gilbert again, this time with a kind of impatience.

‘Ah—yes,’ Gilbert said quickly with the appearance of shaking himself out of a trance. ‘Anne, this is Miss Rose, Dr Ward’s secretary. Winnie,’ he went on with just the slightest falter, ‘this is Miss Shirley-Cuthbert, my—my classmate.’

‘_Classmate_?’ Winifred repeated in tones of undisguised surprise, looking Anne up and down, the smile still on her lips. ‘Why, Gilbert, you never told me grown-up ladies attended your school.’

‘Oh, you mean _this_?’ Anne asked, gesturing with a self-conscious little laugh at her dress and all the while wondering whatever Gilbert could mean by behaving _like that_ (and also why she’d never to this day known anything about this girl, with whom he was familiar enough to call her by her Christian name). ‘This is not what I usually wear. It was just – it was for practical reasons that I got all turned out like this. Usually, I dress plain as plain can be.’

‘Oh, I _see_,’ said Winifred drawlingly, sounding as though she knew a great deal more than Anne had told her about herself. ‘Well, I’m afraid we must be getting on. Isn’t that so, Gilbert?’

***

Forcing himself to take his eyes off of Anne, Gilbert looked round at Winifred and nodded.

‘Yes. Yes, of course we must. Dr Ward is probably wondering what’s become of us.’

He turned back towards Anne, forcing himself to give her a smile which, he hoped, looked merely casual.

It was, however, very difficult for him to be casual in front of _this_ Anne.

Mostly, he rather wished to get away from her and collect his thoughts before he blurted out something he would be sure to regret for the rest of his life, like telling her that she was the girl of his dreams, and always had been—

‘Well, he knows we always have tea together now,’ Winifred’s voice chirped in the background. ‘So he’ll just assume we’ve lost track of time. It’s not difficult in such pleasant company.’

Anne, who had been smiling somewhat stiffly, shot a quick glance at the other girl and, a pink spot appearing in either cheek, said in a voice whose coolness grated on Gilbert’s ears,

‘Of course. Still, I’d better hurry up as well. Cole will be getting worried,’ she added with a quick look at Gilbert.

Swallowing thickly, he nodded, and then remembered the parasol.

‘Here,’ he said, holding it out to her. ‘I hope it’s not damaged.’

Anne flashed him a perfunctory smile and accepted the troublesome item. Then, turning promptly towards Winifred, said briskly,

‘It was lovely to meet you. Have a good day, and pay my respects to Dr Ward.’

Gilbert opened his mouth to say something more, to make her understand – well, he hardly knew what, except that he really, really hated the way she had looked at him a moment ago, with that cold, withdrawn glance.

However, before he could do that, Anne had already swung round on her heels and was walking quickly down the pavement, looking, from behind, like a complete stranger, a rich, perfectly poised, elegantly dressed lady to whom a farm-bred boy like himself could indeed hardly hope to find anything to say.

***

‘Is she very rich?’

Gilbert looked at Winifred, who asked the question in a carefully casual tone, with a slight frown between his brows.

He wished very much to be alone, and wondered that it had never occurred to him before how affected Winnie’s way of speaking was. As though she had her mouth full of something that made it impossible for her to articulate words properly.

‘No,’ he said shortly.

‘Well, that outfit she had on must have cost more than my year’s wages amount to. It fairly _screamed_ Paris-made. I suppose that man she’s mentioned – Cole, was it? – is courting her, and it’s a present from him? A stuffy old bore, but terribly well-off, I presume?’

‘No,’ Gilbert said again, and then went on with a shrug, ‘I mean, I suppose he _is_ pretty much well-off now, but he is neither old nor a bore. He’s an art student, I think.’

‘Oh, how romantical,’ Winifred said with exaggerated gush. ‘Just the right kind of husband for a girl like her, so striking and haughty. I suppose it won’t be long now before she stops being _your_ classmate and becomes _his_ muse,’ she added with a small, meaningful laugh.

To which series of remarks, although they caused his stomach to churn unpleasantly, Gilbert did not succeed in coming up with a pertinent reply.


	2. it starts so soft and sweet and turns them to hunters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when these two idiots get jealous of each other, what can you expect? :D

As Gilbert watched Anne approach the spot where he and Bash were standing on the Charlottetown train platform he was conscious of a distinct feeling of relief at seeing her back in her girlish clothes, with the two long coppery braids – which he never before thought of as something that one day could simply _not_ be there – hanging down the front of the familiar dark blue coat.

This was the Anne he knew.

_His_ Anne, and not the refined stranger into whom Cole’s money and influence had transformed her, he thought with a sudden spike of possessiveness pricking at his heart – possessiveness which made him, in spite of himself and with a lack of good manners of which he was perfectly aware, reply to the cheerful helloes she offered him and Bash with nothing but a stiff, perfunctory nod.

***

Gilbert was looking downright angry with her, and Anne had no idea _why_.

She took her seat opposite him and Bash and, with a slow careful movement, smoothed her skirts over her knees.

And then she looked up and met his eyes.

Her stomach turned a somersault, and she hastily looked away and out of the window.

Honestly, all of this was super frustrating. Because, if _either_ of them had any right to be angry with the other (which, being nothing but classmates, they naturally didn’t) it was _her_, not Gilbert.

After all, it was _he_ who had been running around Charlottetown with a grown-up woman called Winnie (a satisfyingly unromantic name) who, apparently, was in the habit of calling him Gilbert. It was she, Anne, who ought to be staring at him with disapproval, and she would begin to do so without further delay.

Accordingly, crossing her arms over her chest, she shot him a sharp, cold look. To her mixed triumph and bewilderment, this seemed to take Gilbert by surprise: his face lost some of its rigidity, and it was _he_ who looked away this time.

‘What has the unfortunate mutt done to deserve a scowling look like this, Anne?’

***

Sebastian’s quiet voice, with only the faintest spark of his old humorousness, served as a timely reminder of the presence of a person whose causes for lack of spirits were so much more legitimate than their own, and was enough to bring both Anne and Gilbert into a less egotistic frame of mind.

The rest of the journey passed off reasonably well, no more openly hostile glances being exchanged between the two young people – neither of whom, of course, had _any_ real reason to be at all angry or annoyed with the other.

***

When they arrived at Green Gables, Delphine was asleep in her basket and the table was spread with plentiful supper.

‘I’m not letting you two go before you’ve had something to eat,’ Marilla said with a welcoming smile.

Bash accepted the invitation thus worded without much demur, but Gilbert, who was feeling extremely uncomfortable for a reason which he knew had its origins both in the look Anne had thrown him on the train and their earlier encounter on Charlottetown main street, said in a would-be natural voice,

‘Thank you, Miss Cuthbert, but I’ve had plenty for tea in Charlottetown, and I’m really not hungry. If it’s all right with you, I’ll wait for Bash out on the porch. I've a headache, and some fresh air might do me good.’

Marilla looked anxious.

‘You’re overtiring yourself, Gilbert Blythe,’ she said, giving him a sternly affectionate look. ‘It would be a wonder if your head _didn’t_ ache.’

And how very true that is, Gilbert thought. 

Outwardly, he merely gave the elderly woman a deprecating smile. ‘I think it’s simply that Charlottetown air doesn’t really agree with me. I’ll be myself again before we reach home. Goodnight and thank you, Miss Cuthbert.’

Marilla gave him a curt nod, and he went out of the room, extremely conscious of a pair of gray-blue eyes following his movements from where their owner was standing in the darkened corner by the side of Delphine’s basket.

***

_Plenty for tea in Charlottetown_!

Naturally, Anne could bet he had had it too. _Miss Winnie_ would have seen to that.

‘Anne? Aren’t you going to sit down?’ Marilla asked with some impatience.

The words were out of her mouth before her brain had time to consider their advisability.

‘I forgot to ask Gilbert about – well, it’s to do with tomorrow’s, I mean Monday’s, classes, so you wouldn’t understand anyway. I’ll just go out for a second and tell him about – about that thing.’

And, before anyone in the room could object or comment, she had grabbed her coat and slammed the front door closed behind herself.

***

Gilbert must have heard it, for he looked round from where he was standing leaning against the porch railing.

It was too dark for Anne to be able to see his expression from this far away, and so she went up to him, walking rather slowly, and resolving within herself to handle this situation like the adult she had already proved herself capable of being.

She stood next to him and looked up into his face, composing her features into what she hoped was a friendly smile.

‘_So_?’

The word came out of Gilbert’s mouth with unexpected vehemence, and the way he was staring down at her made Anne feel frustratingly on the defensive.

‘So what?’ she faltered, completely taken aback by the angry resentment painted all over his face.

‘So why were you alone? In town? Why wasn’t Cole chaperoning you like he was meant to? Like you’d told everyone he would be?’

So much for being adults about it, then.

Anne could feel her skin tingle with anger as, her eyes flashing, she hissed emphatically,

‘Because, fortunately, not everyone thinks I’m a child in need of constant surveillance. Some people, unlike_ you_, are actually able to appreciate the fact that sixteen is quite old enough for—‘

‘For _what_?’ Gilbert put in in a tone of dubious aloofness which sent Anne over the edge.

A kind of cold composure possessed her, and she replied in a cool, detached tone, looking up at him with a meaningfully vengeful half-smile,

‘For all sorts of things. But,’ she went on in complete disregard of her better judgement, which was screaming at her to stop, ‘perhaps you should ask your friend Miss Winifred about it. She’s sure to be better informed than little provincial inexperienced me.’

Gilbert’s face lost its fierceness for a moment, and he asked blankly,

‘What? What has _she_ got to do with any of this?’

Anne let out a small derisive laugh.

In reality, she hated herself more with every word she said, and the frown which appeared on Gilbert’s face, half-bewildered and half-angry, made her want to run away and hide herself from his view forever.

However, there was nothing for it now but to stand her ground and not let him get the upper hand, no matter how many awful things she was going to have to say to him in the process.

‘Nothing, except that I don’t see how _you_ can possibly consider yourself qualified to censure _my_ behaviour when it’s _you_ who’s spending your weekends entertaining ladies at cafes while allowing everyone here to assume you’re working _so terribly hard_ at Dr Ward’s office.’

Gilbert was silent for a moment, and Anne, turning her head away, had to bite her lip very hard indeed to prevent it from trembling with the tears of misery and shame she could feel welling up in her throat.

She was preparing herself to hear him snap back that it was none of her business how and with whom he was spending his time, but instead all he said, his voice oddly withdrawn, was,

‘Anne, is there anything between you and Cole?’

***

He had not meant to ask this question, but it by now he had been turning it over in his mind for so long that it sprang out before he could stop himself.

Altogether, Gilbert was unsure whether it was with himself or Anne that he was more angry.

Why did she follow him out? If she hadn’t, he would have cooled down by the next time he saw her, and he would not have made a fool of himself.

He did not want to quarrel with her, he honestly _didn’t_, but the jealousy which had been planted in him by Winifred’s remarks about how there must exist some kind of understanding between Anne and Cole had reached fever pitch when Anne herself hinted at how at sixteen she was old enough for certain things, by which she presumably meant courtship and marriage, and that in the near future too.

Courtship with and marriage to Cole Mackenzie, that was, a wealthy art student for whom she would become a muse and who would supply her with all those cosmopolitan entertainments and take her to all those cultural events which her adventuresome spirit was so well adapted to feed on, and which he, Gilbert, being poor and not even sure whether becoming a doctor was a feasible future anymore, could not hope to be ever able to procure.

And so, the question was out before he could bite his stupid tongue, and now Anne was staring up at him with eyes as wide as saucers and an inscrutable expression on her face, pale and curiously tense in the dusk which surrounded them.

And then, suddenly, she started to laugh – a high-pitched, unnatural, almost hysterical laughter which sent an unpleasant chill down Gilbert’s spine.

‘Of course there is,’ she said eventually, her laughter ceasing as abruptly as it had begun and her tones carefully casual. ‘Haven’t I ever told you? We’re engaged to be married. I believe you weren’t there when it happened.’

***

Later on, when she lay in her bed crying futile tears of anger at her own foolishness and indignation at Gilbert’s insufferable impertinence, Anne still had no idea what had possessed her at that moment.

The thought that she had done it in order to hurt Gilbert, or rather to see whether she was capable of hurting him in that way, of making him see that other people – _other boys_ – did not always tease and lecture and look down their noses at her, was humiliating, and yet it was also true.

Had she succeeded? It was impossible to say.

When she had made her mad proclamation, he simply continued to stare at her, not a muscle in his face moving to show whether the revelation caused him to feel any particular emotion at all.

His eyes were very dark and oddly intense, true, but then his eyes always were _that_ in Anne’s experience, and so that was no indication of anything.

Then he opened his mouth. Perhaps to laugh at her. Or perhaps to tell her she was a stupid little girl and mad into the bargain.

She would never know, because at that moment the front door behind them opened with a creak of the hinges, and Bash came out onto the porch, carrying Delphine’s basket and followed by Marilla’s – jarringly loud, to Anne’s ears – goodnights.

And at that, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from Gilbert’s, Anne, in one swift movement, slid back into the house, carelessly ignoring Marilla’s injunctions to stop behaving like a possessed heathen and have some supper before she went to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all right, so it turns out this is going to have three chapters instead of two - hope you don't mind! :D  
(it's just that it's occured to me it was unfair not to let Anne get even with Gilbert and get to see him in THAT shirt - you know, the one he slew us all by wearing at the beginning of ep 4 :D)


	3. the beast you’ve made of me (I’ve held it in, but now it seems you’ve set it running free)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guys I'm sorry I keep drawing it out like this!  
I promise the next chapter is really going to be the last one, and these ridiculous kids are going to have to actually TALK to each other :D

The next day, which was Sunday, Anne awoke before sunrise with a very clear resolution in her heart: namely, that she would go see Gilbert with as little delay as (seeing it wasn’t proper daylight yet) decently possible, and _explain_.

She _had_ to explain.

She had to tell him she hadn’t meant it, what she’d said about herself and Cole. That it was a childish pact she had been talking about, and not an engagement in any real sense of the word.

Because somehow, she couldn’t stand the thought of Gilbert thinking that it _was_ for one minute more than was absolutely inevitable.

The fact that it was Sunday was actually good news, because it meant that she could seek Gilbert out in the privacy of his house rather be forced to find a way of having a private conversation with him during school.

Thus, by the time the rising sun was staining the eastern horizon pink, Anne, in a surprisingly cheerful frame of mind, was all dressed up and ready to leave the house.

All she had to do, she told herself, was to run over to the Blythe farm before Marilla and Matthew were up and own up to having behaved unreasonably under the stress of the moment.

The question of how Gilbert was going react to her admission of having told a purposeful and silly lie did not enter into her considerations, for the very good reason that Anne refused to let it.

***

Gilbert had spent a wretched night, and was now spending an even more wretched morning.

He had awoken in the small hours of the morning with the sound of Anne’s voice telling him that she was engaged to marry Cole Mackenzie echoing in his ears until he could stand it no longer and decided to get up and chase the haunting memory away by studying.

His medical textbooks were so extremely down-to-earth that they were certain to help him pull himself together, and stop behaving like a lovesick fool.

Except it was rather difficult, since he was aware that if he was behaving like a lovesick fool it was because he _was_ one.

He was in love with Anne Shirley, and had been for what seemed like always, and was now confronted with the fact that, while he would never have regarded her as one of the girls who marry early, she had every intention of doing so.

He had been sitting at the kitchen table staring at the same spot on the page without being at all able to take in the words for some five minutes when there was a very cautious, quiet knock at the front door.

***

As, through the kitchen window, Anne caught sight of the back of a curly head of dark hair bent over a book spread out on the table, some of her determination left her very abruptly.

In fact, she was rather inclined to turn and go – _run_ – back home.

But then she remembered.

She remembered the way Gilbert had looked at her after she’d told him she was engaged to Cole. She had pretended to herself it was no particular way at all, but she knew that wasn’t true.

There _had_ been something in his eyes which had caused her, when she remembered it later, cry herself to sleep, and she had to do what she could to make sure she wouldn’t ever see it again.

Not in Gilbert’s eyes.

So, gathering up all her courage, she knocked on the door.

***

Ever after, Anne counted it proof of her abnormally strong power of will that she had managed not to make an absolute clown of herself the moment the door opened.

Because she might have easily done something terribly, irreparably stupid, like turn around and run, or go into hysterics, or – what was prospectively the most embarrassing option and also the one she felt most strongly inclined to opt for – throw herself at and all over Gilbert, or – or at least reach out and _touch_ him.

She did not do any of these things; she stood her ground firmly if a little dazedly, and her one fully coherent thought was that now she finally understood the meaning of the word “indecent”.

Because the way Gilbert was looking was indubitably indecent, and so were the thoughts inspired in her by seeing him like this.

It was not that he was by any means in a state of undress. No; and perhaps that was the worst of it. In such a case, she might simply laugh if off.

As it was, all she could do was try not to stare, pretend not to notice the way the tight white cotton shirt he was wearing clung so extremely closely to and revealed, with the slightest motion, the unexpected, taut muscles of his arms and stomach.

Pretend not to want to see whether they were as hard to the touch as they seemed to be to the eye.

_God, had he grown._

‘Anne? What’s the matter? Is someone ill?’

Startled out of her reverie, she looked up into his searching, bewildered face.

***

Gilbert’s feelings at seeing Anne on his doorstep at half past six on a Sunday morning quickly morphed from utter surprise into confused concern when he saw how odd she was looking, standing there apparently dumbstruck, her eyes wild in an unnaturally pale face.

‘Anne? What’s the matter? Is someone ill?’ he prompted eventually, no longer able to stand the strained silence between them.

She looked up at him in a startled kind of way, as though she had forgotten he was there at all, and her cheeks went pink.

‘No,’ she said, her voice breathless. ‘I mean, no one’s ill or anything. But something _is_ the matter. I came to—to—‘

Gilbert’s eyebrows shot up as he realised she was actually trembling as she stood there, and a sharp pang of worry tugged at his heart.

‘Come on in,’ he said quickly, reaching out to touch her arm in order to make her move inside the kitchen and shutting the door closed. ‘Here, sit down,’ he went on, offering her the nearest chair.

Anne dropped into it in a mechanical, listless kind of way extremely unlike her usual briskness, which only served to increase Gilbert’s anxiety about her state.

‘Are you sure you’re not ill? Or perhaps something’s happened to upset you?’ he queried carefully, peering closely into her face, which had gone pale once again.

Her eyes darted up to his face, wide and glowing.

‘I came to tell you that I’ve lied to you. Yesterday.’

Gilbert’s eyebrows shot up, and he opened his mouth to speak.

But, before he could do so, a small squeak, accompanied by all the signs of promptly intensifying into a full-on outburst of infantile tears, issued from the basket standing on the chair placed near the hearth.

***

Paradoxically, this was perhaps the best thing which could happen to Anne.

Just as it was beginning to look as though nothing short of an earthquake was going to bring her back her presence of mind and restore her fluttering heart to its usual pace, Delphine’s whimperings caused her, with the promptitude born of an early learnt and long endured habit, to spring up, shrug off her coat and, approaching the basket in three quick strides, take the baby out and enfold it a tender embrace.

‘Delly dearest, I never knew you were here,’ she crooned, looking into the baby’s face with adoration and quite forgetting Gilbert and his shirt and her own lies and absurd behaviour and all the rest of it. ‘You are such a precious little angel truly, aren’t you? The best behaved little lady in the whole of Avonlea. And the prettiest too. You’re the pride of your papa and of uncle Gilbert too, aren’t you?’

She looked up, the radiant smile which the sight of Delphine’s smooth dimpled cheeks had induced still on her face, and met Gilbert’s eyes.

His anxious frown melted away and gave way to a goofy, soft grin, and for a few moments they looked at each other in unbroken, unblinking silence.

Then Delly gave a small squeak, and, starting a little, Anne looked back down at her.

Gilbert cleared his throat.

‘I took her downstairs with me so that Bash might for once get some uninterrupted rest,’ he in a consciously matter-of-fact tone, coming up to stand beside Anne and making a face at Delphine, to which she responded with a wide toothless smile. ‘I couldn’t sleep anyway.’

_Why not?_ It couldn’t possibly be because of the scene she’d made yesterday, could it? Or perhaps it was the memory of the _delicious_ tea he’d had with Miss Winifred that had been keeping him awake?

While these troubling questions kept revolving in Anne’s mind, she allowed Delphine to play with her finger, on which the latter presently attempted to suck.

She turned towards Gilbert, and something about the way he was looking at her made her knees feel oddly weak.

Not _that_ again.

‘I think she’s hungry,’ she said, giving him a somewhat faint smile.

‘I’ll heat up some milk.’

***

As Gilbert moved away towards the stove, he observed, from the corner of his eye, Anne settle herself down on the small seat in the corner of the room with Delphine cradled cosily in her arms.

The sight made him want to _scream_. Scream with frustration at the thought that it was no longer within his power to try and win Anne’s consent to share her future with him.

And that was why it hurt like hell to be with her like this, just the two of them and a baby, and the quietude of early Sunday morning outside. It hurt because it wasn’t real, and never would be.

He handed her the milk bottle without a word and, leaning against the table, stood looking on as she fed it to Delphine. This, of course, only served to increase the feeling of infuriated hopelessness which had by now completely taken possession of him.

‘It’s Delphine the most beautiful name?’ Anne remarked suddenly, speaking in a low, gentle voice and never taking her eyes off the baby’s face. ‘I wish my parents had had Mary’s inventiveness, and called me something equally thrilling and artistic.’

_Artistic_. Of course.

‘Well, you’ll be in a perfect position to make up for it when you’ve got your own children,’ Gilbert said bluntly, her choice of _that_ word of all others fairly pushing him over the edge of discretion.

Anne glanced up, and he returned her uncertain gaze with merciless directness.

‘_What_?’ he went on recklessly. ‘What do you look so startled for? Or have forgotten that you’ve spilled your secret yesterday, and I know all about your intentions to become Mrs Cole Mackenzie?’

Anne’s cheeks went pale, and she looked down, pursing her lips very tight.

‘And have _you_ forgotten what I said when I came in?’ she countered quietly, looking back up. ‘What I said yesterday – it was a lie. Or at least, it wasn’t true in the sense you understood it. In the sense I made you understand it.’

It was now Gilbert’s turn to look foolish, for he had indeed, in the extremes of emotions which he had gone through since, quite forgotten Anne’s hectic and incomplete confession of a few moments’ ago.

‘What—‘ he began abruptly, but Anne lifted her hand to silence him.

‘Do be _quiet_, you blunderbuss,’ she hissed, and when he looked his bewilderment at the exhortation she gestured down at Delphine, who had finished the milk and had evidently just fallen asleep in Anne’s arms.

***

Rising tentatively, she went over to where the basket stood and placed the baby in it gently, tucking her in. And all the while she could feel Gilbert’s eyes following her unflinchingly.

Eventually, she straightened up and looked at him, and though her eyes were anxious, the tenderness with which she had been looking at Delly had not yet had time to die out of her face.

***

And it was this expression which came as a final straw to Gilbert.

If Anne Shirley did not know better than to come to his house at an ungodly hour of the morning in order to talk riddles at him and let him see her with such an expression on her face then Anne Shirley was going to have to face the consequences of her actions.

With an abruptness he made no attempt to subdue, he broke away from the table and, approaching Anne in two long strides and completely ignoring the way her eyes widened in surprise and something even approaching fear, caught at her arm and fairly dragged her out of the kitchen and into the hall.

There, he stopped so that she was trapped between him and the wall.

‘Let me go, you idiot!’ Anne hissed as soon as the door was closed, trying to wring her arm out of his grasp. ‘I said, let go! This hurts!’

‘Are you marrying Cole Mackenzie or aren’t you?’ Gilbert asked, completely disregarding her pleas.

Anne, whose indignation had coloured her cheeks red as a peony, went very pale instead.

‘No,’ she said a little faintly. ‘I’m not. I lied about this. At least, it’s not like—‘

He cut her off, his tone brusque and his eyes holding hers mercilessly.

‘Are you marrying anyone else? As in, currently planning to marry anyone else?’

***

Anne swallowed hard.

She could feel the heat radiating off Gilbert’s body permeate her own, and it was making her giddy. So was the very consciousness of how close to her he was standing.

And so was the way, half-crazed really, in which his eyes were roaming her face, presently to settle on her lips.

‘No,’ she said again, this time in a kind of terrible, throaty whisper.

She had, however, no time to reflect on how awkward her voice had sounded, because as soon as the words were out of her mouth Gilbert bent down and kissed her.

It was so sudden and forceful and – and, well, _needy_ – that she let out a surprised whimper, and she was sure, as far as she could think at all, that had it not been for the wall behind her she would have stumbled backwards.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over, and Anne found herself staring at Gilbert, her face cupped between his hands and his eyes darkened with what she could only describe, incongruous as the word seemed, as _thirst_.

***

Gilbert stared back into Anne’s dazed, starry eyes and, as the realisation of what it was that he had just done and the deathly paleness of her face indicative, no doubt, of her horror at the liberty he had taken, dawned on him, panic seized him and, letting go of her face he reached for her hands and said in a hoarse, hurried whisper,

‘Anne, I’m sorry—I’m sorry if I’ve frightened you, but I just can’t go on pretending I—‘

There was the creak of a door opening upstairs, and Bash’s voice called in a voice which, though in reality subdued, wore to the two breathless human beings who stood facing each other in the corridor below a semblance to the trumpet of Jericho,

‘Blythe? Are you down there? Is Delphine with you?’

‘Yes,’ Gilbert called back while Anne, throwing him a wide-eyed look of which he could not interpret the meaning, slipped her hands from his. ‘She’s asleep. You can go back to bed, Bash. It’s really early. I’ll look after her.’

‘No, I’m coming down too, just give me a minute to get dressed. And then we can have something really good for breakfast.’

They heard the door close.

Gilbert, his heart in his stomach, tried to reach for Anne, but she had already spun round and, having opened the kitchen door noiselessly, was heading towards the chair on which she’d hung her coat what seemed right now like ages ago.

He saw her hands shake as she strove to button it up, and, catching at her wrists, tried to look into her obstinately averted face.

‘Anne, you have to listen to me,’ he said, quiet but insistent.

Her eyes snapped up to his, flashing and hard.

‘Let go of my hands, Gilbert Blythe,’ she said in a voice of steel.

And he had no choice but to do so.

And then, without another word or look, she turned round and, moving very stiffly, marched out of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT EP 5??? because it was everything???? and I keep wasting my time rewatching that freaking dancing practice scene at least 10 times a day??
> 
> but first of all, can Miss Stacy PLEASE gather all those poor clueless girls together after school and just simply tell them what REPRO. . .DUCTION (:D) is all about and how it works??? so that idiots like Charlie might stop pouring nonsense into their ears and scaring them to their deaths??? (also that scene with all the girls crowding up to Gilbert as soon as he’s passed the threshold of the church and making Anne ask him if they are, one and all, infertile . . . I’m literally laughing out loud just thinking about it :D “WHAT HAS HE SEEN???” well Ruby dear he delivered a baby when he was sixteen so . . . I suppose he’s seen it all in a detailed if scarcely pleasant way you could say :D)
> 
> also, the BONFIRE??? the girls offering thanks to a female goddess??? Ruby being unabashedly emotional and falling to her knees and screaming I love being a woman??? the ENERGY of that single scene alone trumps every Oscar-winning film ever made I swear, it was EVERYTHING to me, it cleansed my very soul
> 
> also with reference to Ruby: I just love it how they’re pairing her with Moody?? and the shy way in which she sat down beside him as he played his guitar? altogether she is the epitome of pure sweetness, much much more likeable that the books Ruby, and I hope to God she does not die (although she does seem more delicate than the other girls and I don’t think it’s entirely a pose on her part . . . :/)
> 
> also: Diana and Jerry are well on the way to eloping to France together and I do not blame them (they’ve made more progress in one episode than shirbert has in 2 and a half seasons :D he walked her home?? she embroidered him a handkerchief?? he gave her a book and she HUGGED IT TO HER CHEST?? in short Diana looked at the idea of slowburn and said nah, never heard of it :D)
> 
> and finally, THAT 2 MINUTES OF PURE BLISS that was the dance scene. I was expecting 20 seconds of shirberty cuteness at the most and they gave us 2 WHOLE MINUTES. first Gilbert PURPOSEFULLY waits to see which circle Anne's in and joins it to dance in the same group as her. then they look wistfully at each other & Gil gets super jealous bc Anne is dancing with Charlie Sloan. then he GRABS HER HAND AND PULLS HER INTO HIS LINE even though that is against the rules???? and then he takes her hand and looks so proud of it and she is smiling and they look like they literally just got married???? and then they can’t take their eyes off of each other?? and like the idiots they are they run away from each other because they are just too heated to remain in each other’s presence any longer without kissing each other’s faces off I presume??? (also: the difference between Gil's reaction to his "date" with miss Winnie where he was all smug and confident aftwerwards and his absolute PANIC at the feelings which getting to touch Anne Shirley's hand awakens in him? i live for that shit.)
> 
> one thing I don’t quite get is, WHO was Gil talking about to Bash?? did he mean that he doesn’t know whether the fact that he finds miss Winnie Bones attractive OBLIGES him to marry her and then bash was like nah it’s not just about that and Gil was like I see because he remembered how he and Anne had had a deep subliminal connection from day 1? I am confused by that scene I must admit
> 
> altogether it was a GIFT of an episode, and I can’t wait to see everything turn to dust before our very eyes next week :D or maybe it won’t?? If we pray really tight maybe it won’t??? maybe miss winnie will just go and get married to Caleb Lynde?? can that happen please?? :D


	4. until I wrap myself inside your arms, I cannot rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> well, they DO end up together
> 
> (also, I know Anne is probably too young to have thoughts like these - but ep 6 left me so angsty, and I suppose my jaded self simply couldn't help breaking through. please excuse it if you can)

Anne stumbled home in a kind of daze, and when, upon opening the front door, she was confronted by Marilla’s stare of indignant confusion from where she was setting the table for breakfast, her sole response was to stand there gazing back, motionless and pale and with one thought only running through her mind.

She had been kissed by a boy.

Or rather, she had been kissed by Gilbert Blythe, who clearly was not a _boy_ anymore.

Could Marilla see it?

Was it written all over her face as plainly as her pounding heart and the way her lips still seemed to burn form contact with his made it seem certain to Anne that it must be?

‘I asked, where on earth have you been, child?’

Marilla’s tone was sharp and commanding, and Anne did her best to focus.

‘I—I had to see Diana about—I had to return a book of exercises that I borrowed from her. I forgot to do so yesterday, with—with everything that’s happened—I mean—‘

‘_A book of exercises_?’ Marilla repeated, her voice a mixture of disbelief and disapproval. ‘And pray, why couldn’t you return it to her tomorrow at school instead of running around like a heathen on a Sunday morning? No, don’t bother excusing yourself,’ she added with a wave of the hand as Anne opened her mouth to respond. ‘Just run up to room real quick and make yourself presentable for church. You look as though you’d seen a ghost.’

Anne nodded, and, with a silent compliance Marilla had not expected, took off her outer things and hurried upstairs.

***

Once there, she stood quite still, and then, with slow, cautious movements, approached the small mirror into which she had peered so many times in the hopes of finding her homely features magically transformed into the classical lines of perfect beauty.

Her eyes immediately went to her lips, and her one wonder was that they were not bruised from the sheer vehemence of Gilbert’s kiss.

With a sense of great burning shame in the pit of her stomach, she realised that she actually wished they _had been_. Then, at least, she would have known she had not made it all up.

Because the entirety of what had come to pass between them was completely unlike anything that Anne had ever experienced before.

She would never, in a thousand years, thought Gilbert – Avonlea prize young gentleman that he was – capable of behaving like _this_.

And certainly _she_ had never before felt the way he’d made her feel.

Scared, yes – downright frightened at the unexpectedness and suddenness of it all.

But also – well, wanting more. Wishing, deep down, that Bash had not interrupted them, and that Gilbert had kept doing—_it_—and that she’d had the chance to—to—

Well, in short, to kiss him back. And then to let _him_ kiss _her_ back some more.

It seemed to her that it was only thus that the ineffable sensation in the pit of her stomach – which she could not, for all her stock of polysyllabic words, name – could be stopped from spreading all over her body until it seemed to her she could not know peace until he touched her again.

Her eyes wide and glossy, Anne watched a great suffusion of crimson flood the reflection of her cheeks.

***

It was as well Anne had never acquired, in spite of Marilla’s and Mrs Lynde’s best efforts, any very rigid conception of just what the proper frame of mind to attend church in was.

Had it been so, she would certainly not be capable of sitting through the nearly half-an-hour-long sermon without taking in a single word of it and only focusing on making sure she kept not only her eyes, but her whole face averted from where _he_ was sitting on the opposite side of the central isle a couple of pews behind.

The service ended eventually, and Anne, keeping her eyes firmly glued to the floor, followed Marilla out of the church and into the startling brightness of the spring day outside.

‘A very well-spoken sermon, don’t you find it, Miss Cuthbert?’ a bass voice asked suddenly by their side, and Anne was surprised into forgetting her larger purpose (i.e., not to allow herself to see so much of _a certain person_ as the sleeve of his coat) and looking up.

Mr Atticus Pye – an uncle of Josie’s and a man whose favourite pastime it was to express his views in a such a way as to make sure everyone in his vicinity heard them – was standing planted firmly in their way.

And directly over his shoulder, a very few steps away, standing talking to Mr and Mrs Barry, was none other than Gilbert Blythe.

As soon as Mr Pye had boomed out his introductory pronouncement, Gilbert’s eyes snapped up, caught Anne’s, and, it seemed to her, held them by sheer magnetic force.

‘It is indeed well of the Revered to remind young people that they must at all times be on guard against the temptations life throws their way. I’m sure that as guardian to a girl of marriageable age you agree with me, Miss Cuthbert.’

To Anne’s mortification, Mr Barry looked over his shoulder at that, and then turned round with every appearance of meaning to join the conversation.

‘I hope our girls are not so wayward as to cause us any anxiety in _that_ direction,’ he said, throwing a complacent glance towards where Diana was standing talking to Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis, all three of them looking, in their Sunday turn-outs, the personification of girlish innocence. ‘Isn’t that right, Miss Cuthbert?’

‘Certainly,’ said Marilla tersely, causing Anne to tear her eyes away from Gilbert’s face and look up at her instead. ‘Not to mention, Mr Pye, that my Anne’s still a schoolgirl, and so’s Diana. They are both way too young to be considered of marriageable age.’

Anne listened to all this with a curious sense of detachment, as though it was not herself that was being discussed but some other girl – the girl she had been this morning, before _everything_ had changed.

‘But certainly not too young to think of themselves as of courtship-able age, eh?’ countered the irrepressible Atticus Pye. ‘My niece Josephine is not wasting her time, from what I’ve heard, and neither should any young lady who wants to make sure of securing a good match.’

Mr Barry laughed. ‘I can assure you, Atticus, that my daughter has no need to seek for a good match in this wilderness out here. We’re sending her out to a finishing school in Paris next autumn, and then she’ll be presented at court. And if she fails to find an eligible husband there—‘ shrugging his shoulders, he allowed the sentence to trail off into significant silence.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Atticus Pye, looking somewhat discomfited at this point scored by Diana’s prospects over those of his own niece. ‘And what about _you_, Miss Shirley? Are you too going abroad in pursuit of – ehm – new territories to conquer?’

The metaphor made Anne cringe and look away, which was a very ill-advised move, for it resulted in her catching Gilbert’s eye again, and in her heart giving a treacherous stutter.

Anger at her own silliness, and at the power he had to cause her to feel such things by simply standing there – a power, it seemed to Anne, which he had acquired completely without her permission and against her wish – rolled over her, and, tearing her gaze away from Gilbert’s and looking the odious Pye man directly in the eyes, she said in a clear, cool voice,

‘_I_ am currently in pursuit of education, not prospective husbands. And as I mean to continue my education as long as it is physically and financially feasible for me to do so, I do not foresee this situation changing anytime soon. And,’ she added with her voice rising just a little, ‘_everyone_ is welcome to know this. I wish you a good morning, Sir.’

And with that, she turned round on her heel and marched briskly down the path leading to the church gate, holding her head up high and physically having to restrain herself from running.

‘Well, well, Miss Cuthbert, _you_ certainly don’t have much to worry about,’ she heard Mr Pye say in loud, offended tones, ‘with such a shrew as _this_ on your hands. But, considering the colour her hair is, it’s no wonder she’s got such a nasty temper.’

Marilla’s reply was prompt, sharp, and defensive of Anne: but Anne, to whose frustration at Gilbert and indignation with the prying Pye man was now added an overwhelming sense of shame and misery, was by then sobbing so hard she did not hear it.

***

‘Anne! Anne, wait!’

She was walking on fast, fairly stumbling over her own feet.

Gilbert quickened his pace up to a trot and closed the remaining distance between them. They were now on a path which was a shortcut to Green Gables, away from the main road.

Anne showed no signs of recognising his presence and, somewhat recklessly, he caught at her hand, making her stop in spite of herself.

She whipped round, tearing her hand away. Her face, though streaked with recent tears, was hard and mask-like in its expression of cold anger.

‘You—you shouldn’t pay any attention to what a person like Atticus Pye says,’ Gilbert began, his voice uncertain as he tried to think of a good way to handle this situation. ‘Everybody knows that no Pye can ever see beyond the tip of his own nose. I—‘

‘Yes?’ Anne interrupted with a fierceness which quite took him aback. ‘What do _you_ think, Gilbert? Because _I_ think that men named Blythe are not much better than those named Pye in this respect. Save your pity, I neither need nor want it.’

And with this, she turned round and resumed her walk.

Gilbert stood a moment frozen to the spot, feeling that he was probably the biggest goddamn fool on planet Earth.

Then he snapped out of his trance, and caught up with her in a few quick strides.

‘Anne, I’m sorry,’ he said, rather desperately. ‘I know I acted like a brute this morning. I know I offended you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what took over me—‘

‘_Don’t you_?’ she countered sneeringly, stopping abruptly and turning round upon him once again. ‘Wasn’t it simply that you thought no ceremonies necessary with a simple country girl like me?’

‘_What_? Anne, I swear—‘

‘Would you have behaved in the same way towards your Charlottetown girlfriend?’

Gilbert’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach. Anne gaze was by now fairly sending off sparks of anger, and he had some trouble keeping himself from averting his eyes.

‘She’s not my—‘

‘_Isn’t she_?’ she cut him off mercilessly, coldly. ‘Then what _is_ she? Did you think to enlighten me as to _that_ before you took the liberty to—to—‘ she broke off, winced, and went on with increasing speed. ‘No. No, you _didn’t_. So, if there’s anybody I know who can’t see beyond the tip of his own nose, it’s _you_, Gilbert Blythe. When it comes down to it, you’re just as selfish and conceited as the worst of them.’

***

As she spat the words out with increasing fury and heat, Anne could see Gilbert’s expression change from confused to defensive, and even before she’d done speaking she knew what was coming, and she knew how it would end, and she knew she was not going to resist.

Because she was in love with him. And she wanted him to love her back. She wanted him to prefer her to all the other girls – women – out there, and to say it.

They confronted each other silently for a few moments, and then he said quietly,

‘Anne, I swear to you that you—‘ he averted his face for a second, shutting his eyes and swallowing thickly before he glanced back at her, his gaze earnest and pleading. ‘You’re the only one that’s ever mattered to me. From the beginning.’

Anne looked back at him in silence. She felt a sudden wave of weariness come over her, making even the act of speech seem like a task too strenuous to be undertaken.

What _could_ she reply anyway? What _was_ there to say? What he said might be true or it might not – she had no way of finding out.

She never would.

‘I—I only struck up a friendship with Winnie because—because I—you—‘ he floundered, and Anne could tell he was finding her mute, direct gaze disconcerting. ‘She is so easy to be with. Undemanding. And I—I needed to catch a break. But it was a mistake, and I know it now.’

Anne’s lips curled up in a wry, sarcastic smile.

‘You mean she doesn’t always storm out at you the way I keep doing. Yes, I quite see how that would be appealing in comparison.’

‘Yes, but—Anne—‘

He caught at her hands and pulled her a little closer, and Anne let him. After all, this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? It was no use pretending.

‘But it’s you and your complicated ways that I—that I’ve been falling in love with for the past three years,’ Gilbert said, and he looked and sounded so earnest that she smiled again. ‘She could never compare to you, Anne. Never. She’s only an acquaintance. She never could be anything more.’

Anne couldn’t help letting out a small, deprecating sniff of laughter at that.

‘And does _she_ know that?’ she asked in a tone which rung very flat in her own ears.

Gilbert frowned. ‘I mean, I’ve never led her to believe—‘

‘Haven’t you? Not when you asked her out – more than once, I assume?’

His eyebrows shot up, and he looked so crestfallen Anne laughed again in spite of herself.

‘Will you let her know, then?’ she inquired, unable to keep a very slight note of exasperation out of her voice. ‘As soon as you’re next in town? Because I can’t—‘ she broke off, and spoke sincerely at last. ‘You have to choose, Gilbert.’

‘I _have_ chosen,’ he countered promptly, his voice earnest and low as her drew her closer still. ‘There could never be anyone for me but you. It’s the truth, Anne.’

‘All right,’ she said quietly.

She could feel her blood respond with a rush of warmth to the proximity of his body, and she could feel her lips tingle with the memory of the morning’s kiss.

Gilbert’s eyes were very dark when seen from so close up.

‘Please tell me you don’t think too badly of me,’ he said, and she could feel his breath on her lips where she’d just moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

‘I don’t think badly of you,’ she echoed quietly, not very conscious of what she was saying anyway.

Their noses were practically touching by now.

‘May I—‘ Gilbert began in a hoarse whisper, but before he could finish Anne dived in and caught his lips in her own.

There was no turning back now, and there was no escape except through throwing herself into this – headlong, heart and soul, the only way she knew how to.

The ending – _their_ ending – may be happy or it may be sad – who could tell?

***

After all, Anne mused that evening with a sick feeling at the bottom of her heart – and yet with a longing to see Gilbert alone again as soon as was possible, and to kiss him and touch him again – it may well be that love pure and unadulterated, and eternally true, was not compatible with the facts of human existence.

Didn’t the whole of male-written literature teach women that it was their lot to sit _like patience on a monument, smiling at grief_, and that it was no use rioting and longing for absolute security and certainty when these were, perhaps, unobtainable?

_This is so completely different from what I wanted, from what I used to dream about_, Anne thought;_ there is nothing more tedious, puerile and inhumane than love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary_—

_Well then, well then?_*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*The first quotation is, of course, Shakespeare. The second one is Virginia Woolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so I know this is not the perfect, fairy-tale kind of ending I always provide for my fics, and I know most of you will be disappointed, but I simply COULDN'T write this any other way after seeing ep 6. . . the way Gilbert doesn't seem to understand it's WRONG to make heart eyes at two girls at one and the same time is making me want to scream. . .
> 
> I guess the issue is that canon (i.e. books) Gilbert is as unreal as he is perfect - we all know such men don't exist. And the show does show him as more human, behaving in the way a teenage boy rejected by one girl and paid attention to by another would. All that is, I suppose, to the good. But it makes me want to cry nevertheless, because if I have to deal with all the lame guys out there in real life, can't I at least have the comfort of watching a perfect one on screen for a short ten episodes? 
> 
> as soon as Gilbert ignored Anne CRYING IN FRONT OF HIM in favour of a freakin radish I knew it would all go downhill from there, and it DID
> 
> Gilbert walking around with Winnie on his arm is probably one of the most uncomfortable sights I've ever seen. Like, I've seen a screen of Moira W-B saying she's supposed to be 19 but HONESTLY??? that actress is at least 22-23 years old and it SHOWS. he looked like a literal kid next to her and I have no idea why she AND her parents think it's a good idea for her to hang out with a guy who is not even through grammar school yet. I simply haven't.
> 
> the only thing that's saved that episode was the way Anne FINALLY called him out on his shitty behaviour, and BOY if he doesn't appreciate whatever it is that she does in ep 7 to rectify the Josie/Billy situation I'm going to get REAL MAD


End file.
